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One of these travellers was the Horvendile who had been secretary to Count Emmerick when Jurgen was a lad: and the other was Perion de la Foret, that outlaw who had come to Bellegarde very long ago disguised as the Vicomte de Puysange. And all three of these old acquaintances had kept their youth surprisingly. Now Horvendile and Perion marveled at the fine shirt which Jurgen was wearing.
He knew the Marquis to be patient, and even stolid, under a fusillade of epigram and paradox; in short, de Puysange knew the hour and the antagonist for midnight talk to be at hand. And a saturnalia of phrases whirled in his brain, demanding utterance. He waved them aside. Certain inbred ideas are strangely tenacious of existence, and it happened to be his wife they were discussing.
Hah, Saint Vulfran! why should I not? Why should a man not love his cousin?" Adhelmar grinned, while the vicomte twitched his beard and wished Adhelmar at the devil. But the young knight stuck fast at Puysange, for all that, and he and Melite were much together. Daily they made parties to dance, and to hunt the deer, and to fish, but most often to rehearse songs. For Adhelmar made good songs.
The bridge had long been unsafe: Monsieur de Puysange had planned one stronger and less hazardous than the former edifice, of which the arches yet remained, and this was now in the making, as divers piles of unhewn lumber and stone attested: meanwhile, the roadway was a makeshift of half-rotten wood that even in this abating wind shook villainously.
"In fact," de Puysange observed, "warfare being now at an end, it is only natural that you should resort to matrimony. I can assure you it is an admirable substitute. But who is the lucky Miss, my little villain?" "Why, that is for you to settle," Ormskirk said. "I had hoped you might know of some suitable person."
I doubted it, even as I read the proof. Yet it was true, true that I had precedence even of the great Monsieur de Puysange, who had kept me to make him mirth on a shifty diet, first coins, then curses, these ten years past, true that my father, rogue in all else, had yet dealt equitably with my mother ere he died, true that my aunt, less honorably used by him, had shared their secret with the priest who married them, maliciously preserving it till this, when her words fell before me as anciently Jove's shower before the Argive Danae, coruscant and awful, pregnant with undreamed-of chances which stirred as yet blindly in Time's womb.
Lithe and fine and proud she was to the merest glance; yet patience, a thought conscious of itself, beaconed in her eyes, and she appeared, with urbanity, to regard life as, upon the whole, a countrified performance. De Puysange liked that air; he liked the reticence of every glance and speech and gesture, liked, above all, the thinnish oval of her face and the staid splendor of her hair.
Amid these mute, gray travesties of antiquity and the tastes of his ancestors, the Duc de Puysange exulted. "Ma foi, will life never learn to improve upon the extravagancies of romance? Why, it is the old story, the hackneyed story of the husband and wife who fall in love with each other! Life is a very gross plagiarist.
Decidedly I shall never again cast reflections upon the woman in politics, for this is superb. Why, this coup is worthy of me! And what is Petticoat the Second to give you, pray, for making all this possible?" "She will give me," the Marquis retorted, "according to advices received from her yesterday, a lettre-de-cachet for Gaston de Puysange.
I think that, perhaps, the swine, wallowing in the mire which they have neither strength nor will to leave, may yet, at times, long and long whole-heartedly " De Puysange snapped his fingers. "Peste!" said he, "let us now have done with this dreary comedy! Beyond doubt de Soyecourt has much to answer for, in those idle words which were its germ. Let us hiss both collaborators, madame."
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